This is the time of year when I trot out the time-honored tradition of complaining about my neighbors' late-night disposal of leftover fireworks. The neighborhood dogs howl along with me, forming our own little complaint choir. But there is a level of awesomeness achievable by a fireworks display, even one using only firecrackers, that's rarely imagined in my neighborhood.

In 2006, in Appleton, Wisconsin, a fireworks convention was host to a completely insane feat of firecracker combustion -- over 10 million firecrackers were set off in one string. According to the YouTube post this is a record for: "the most firecrackers lit in one megastring (approx. 10,500,000) and the most firecrackers in one superstring (it is the vertical string of crackers)." Big fireworks go boom.